Yevgeny Prigozhin buried with out fanfare in working-class cemetery after dwelling ultimate yr in blaze of self-publicity
From alpha to omega, Yevgeny Prigozhin has ended life because it started.
He was born a poor man, a standard legal and his ultimate resting place is a modest grave in a staff’ cemetery.
He rose from obscurity to nice energy, fame and riches. But his fall from grace was as spectacular as any hero in a Shakespearean tragedy.
A portrait of Yevgeny Prigozhin on his grave in St Petersburg. Pic: STR/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
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As a person honoured with the title ‘Hero of Russia’, Prigozhin might have anticipated full honours in loss of life. A state orchestra, navy escorts, volleys of gunfire, crowds of mourners.
Instead, it was a small ceremony stored secret so individuals stayed away.
Flowers had been left on Yevgeny Prigozhin’s grave after his funeral on the Porokhovskoye cemetery. Pic: AP
Prigozhin was the commander whose forces took Bakhmut, one of many solely Russian successes on this wretched struggle and the mercenary warlord who made untold tens of millions together with his Wagner Group in Africa.
But he’s now humbled in loss of life.
It was, says one British diplomat who is aware of the Russian chief nicely, the one send-off Vladimir Putin might have given him.
Burial web site of Prigozhin
Anything else may need been the main target of unrest.
Sir Tony Brenton mentioned: “You do the proper thing, you bury him next to his father, the relatives are there, you give him necessary honours in some sense, but you do not create an opportunity, a platform, for any kind of support for Prigozhin going forward.”
Prigozhin’s descent from energy and riches was as steep as his aircraft’s the day it fell from the sky – introduced down nearly definitely on the orders of Putin.
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Cameras had been allowed to movie one other funeral, that of Wagner’s cash man and logistics chief, Valery Chekalov, who was additionally on that aircraft.
An Orthodox priest conducts a service through the funeral for Valery Chekalov
People mourn beside Chekalov’s coffin on the Severnoye cemetery. Pic: AP
No news but of Dmitri Utkin’s ultimate send-off – the neo-Nazi deputy of the group was additionally on board.
Prigozhin’s destiny was sealed when his forces took Russia’s navy headquarters in Rostov-on-Don. His armed rebellion fizzled on the outskirts of Moscow.
He had lived his final yr in a brash and brazen blaze of self-publicity. In marked distinction to his ultimate destiny, buried with out fanfare in a working-class cemetery.
For a person who rose from nothing and at all times had a standard contact with strange Russians, it was maybe a becoming finish.